and the holidays rolled around.
The final box contained a pile of maps that he and his dad had collected over the years from hunting, camping, and fishing trips.
For some reason that he couldn’t put his finger on, he felt like he needed to take a closer look, and he began to flip through them.
There were topos of the Wind River Range in Wyoming where they’d gone backpacking last summer; fishing maps of the flowage leading from Lake Algonquin, the biggest local lake; and even a nautical map that showed the location of shipwrecks on the Lake Superior shore about an hour away.
None of those caught his attention, but a topographical map of the nearby national forest did.
He studied it, evaluating the area, the places surrounding it, and comparing that to where the dead wolves had been found.
There was a research station—the Traybor Institute—that’d been built near the edge of the forest that surrounded Waunakee Lake. He wasn’t certain what they did there. He’d heard something about fish population management studies.
The place was pretty new, just put up in the fall, and it wasn’t on the map, but the location fit. It was right in the middle of the sites where the poached wolves had been found.
You’re going to hang out with Nicole tomorrow. You can check it out with her.
Back in his bedroom, Daniel thought about the girl with the tears of blood, the one who’d told him that Madeline was waiting.
He wondered about the wolves and the map and the texts, and the man he’d never met before who just happened to drive into the snowbank in front of them.
What did it mean? What did any of it mean?
Did it have something to do with that research station?
It wasn’t like math, where logic and clear reasoning led to the answers. This was more like unriddling a dream, with only hints and images, vague clues that didn’t lead to anything concrete.
Not exactly his thing.
The blurs he’d had last fall had been about a girl who’d died.
No, not just died—a girl who’d been murdered.
Did someone else die? Was someone else murdered?
This time around, he didn’t just need to figure out what the blurs meant, but what crime they might be helping him solve.
Eventually, after failing to come up with anything, Daniel changed for bed, lay down and, even though he suspected that he wouldn’t be able to sleep very well with so much on his mind, he did fall asleep.
But when he woke up it wasn’t morning. It was still the middle of the night.
And he was standing in his dad’s bedroom, holding a hunting knife, staring down at his sleeping father.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22
3:22 A.M.
Pale moonlight slanted through the window and landed on the foot of the bed, but lit his dad’s room well enough for Daniel to see him lying on his side, turned toward the wall.
The knife’s blade shone in the moonlight, sleek and hungry in the night.
Hungry for blood.
Blood.
No!
Yes, Daniel. Yes.
He stumbled backward and smacked into the dresser, bumping it hard enough to send a picture tumbling off the top.
As it hit the floor, the glass shattered.
His father woke with a start, sitting up, instantly alert; scrutinizing the room for what’d awakened him.
Daniel hid the knife behind his leg.
“Dan?” his dad gasped. “What are you doing in here?”
“Sleepwalking,” he muttered. “I must have been sleepwalking.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d walked in his sleep. Besides doing it once when he was a kid, it’d happened last fall when everything was going on with Emily and the blurs. One night he’d gone outside in a storm and dug up the body of their pet dog who’d been hit by a car three months earlier. But later, when he woke up in bed, drenched and muddy, he’d had no memory of digging up Akira.
In fact, he hadn’t found out what he’d done until the next morning when his dad discovered the dog’s body on the hood of his car.
Daniel knew that his father kept a handgun beside his
The final box contained a pile of maps that he and his dad had collected over the years from hunting, camping, and fishing trips.
For some reason that he couldn’t put his finger on, he felt like he needed to take a closer look, and he began to flip through them.
There were topos of the Wind River Range in Wyoming where they’d gone backpacking last summer; fishing maps of the flowage leading from Lake Algonquin, the biggest local lake; and even a nautical map that showed the location of shipwrecks on the Lake Superior shore about an hour away.
None of those caught his attention, but a topographical map of the nearby national forest did.
He studied it, evaluating the area, the places surrounding it, and comparing that to where the dead wolves had been found.
There was a research station—the Traybor Institute—that’d been built near the edge of the forest that surrounded Waunakee Lake. He wasn’t certain what they did there. He’d heard something about fish population management studies.
The place was pretty new, just put up in the fall, and it wasn’t on the map, but the location fit. It was right in the middle of the sites where the poached wolves had been found.
You’re going to hang out with Nicole tomorrow. You can check it out with her.
Back in his bedroom, Daniel thought about the girl with the tears of blood, the one who’d told him that Madeline was waiting.
He wondered about the wolves and the map and the texts, and the man he’d never met before who just happened to drive into the snowbank in front of them.
What did it mean? What did any of it mean?
Did it have something to do with that research station?
It wasn’t like math, where logic and clear reasoning led to the answers. This was more like unriddling a dream, with only hints and images, vague clues that didn’t lead to anything concrete.
Not exactly his thing.
The blurs he’d had last fall had been about a girl who’d died.
No, not just died—a girl who’d been murdered.
Did someone else die? Was someone else murdered?
This time around, he didn’t just need to figure out what the blurs meant, but what crime they might be helping him solve.
Eventually, after failing to come up with anything, Daniel changed for bed, lay down and, even though he suspected that he wouldn’t be able to sleep very well with so much on his mind, he did fall asleep.
But when he woke up it wasn’t morning. It was still the middle of the night.
And he was standing in his dad’s bedroom, holding a hunting knife, staring down at his sleeping father.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22
3:22 A.M.
Pale moonlight slanted through the window and landed on the foot of the bed, but lit his dad’s room well enough for Daniel to see him lying on his side, turned toward the wall.
The knife’s blade shone in the moonlight, sleek and hungry in the night.
Hungry for blood.
Blood.
No!
Yes, Daniel. Yes.
He stumbled backward and smacked into the dresser, bumping it hard enough to send a picture tumbling off the top.
As it hit the floor, the glass shattered.
His father woke with a start, sitting up, instantly alert; scrutinizing the room for what’d awakened him.
Daniel hid the knife behind his leg.
“Dan?” his dad gasped. “What are you doing in here?”
“Sleepwalking,” he muttered. “I must have been sleepwalking.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d walked in his sleep. Besides doing it once when he was a kid, it’d happened last fall when everything was going on with Emily and the blurs. One night he’d gone outside in a storm and dug up the body of their pet dog who’d been hit by a car three months earlier. But later, when he woke up in bed, drenched and muddy, he’d had no memory of digging up Akira.
In fact, he hadn’t found out what he’d done until the next morning when his dad discovered the dog’s body on the hood of his car.
Daniel knew that his father kept a handgun beside his
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